1. INTRODUCTION
You are the Emperor of the Terran Empire. Your goal is to keep the Empire from falling apart and possibly expand it and be crowned the Emperor of the Whole Galaxy (check Empire/Victory tab for details).

The Empire faces many struggles and dangers. From the outside the imperial borders are constantly pushed by civilized alien powers, vicious primitive aliens and even invaders from other dimensions. From the inside the Empire is eaten up by corruption, disloyal imperial officials, court intrigue, assassins, saboteurs, traitors and notorious rebels.

You lead from your throne on Terra, by issuing high level orders, edicts and appointing proper people to imperial offices. You don’t deal with low level stuff like building farms, so don’t worry about these, just make an edict you want the governors to focus on food production and they will do it. You also grant audiences, decide on numerous issues and meet with alien ambassadors.

Court is a group of imperial officials working directly with the Emperor. They form a sort of central government and are divided into 6 departments (Defence, Treasury, Justice, Internal Affairs, Foreign Affairs and Protocol). Competence of courtiers assigned to a department determine how well the department is run which provide some bonuses and affects the chance of positive/negative department related events. It’s vital to keep the most competent (and loyal and not too corrupted) as the high rank courtiers since how much they affect the department depends on their rank within the court.

Factions are groups of interest, each courtier belongs to one faction. It’s vital to keep those factions balanced (preferable each faction at around 20% influence) or the Empire will suffer penalties. In addition, the Empire gets a specific bonus depending on which faction is the most influential (go to Empire/Court and mouse over the faction crests for details).

Characters come into three main groups: officers (admirals, vice admirals, political officers, commodores), planetary governors and courtiers. Most have 3 stats (Competence, Loyalty, Corruption), also courtiers have a faction affiliation. The trick is to make sure the most competent, most loyal, least corrupted people are in the high positions in the Empire.
Competence affects how well the character does his/her job (effect depending on office, check character’s tooltip).
Loyalty affects how supportive the character is to the Emperor (check Empire/Summary/Rebels for details).
Corruption (negative stats, you want it low) determines how much money an imperial official steals (check Finances tab).

3. GALAXY AND ALIENS
Galaxy is made of systems connected by starlanes, each system has exactly one planet.

Squadrons which you see on the map belong to various imperial fleets and you can move them between systems. It’s best to keep squadrons of the same fleet together since your fleet admirals are not very cooperative to each other. Space travel is warp based, when a squadron enters warp it disappears and then pops up on the destination system after several turns, you don’t have contact with the squadron while in warp and can’t change their orders. Squadrons can enter only explored systems after your brave imperial explorers mapped the starlane.

Exploration is fairly simple and usually don’t require your attention. Each turn you get several exploration checks, for each exploration attempt an expedition will be sent to an unexplored system. Where an expedition will be sent is based on your priorities, which you can set on the planet screen. If no priorities are set the expeditions will be sent in a logical manner trying to explore planets nearest to your planets first.

Aliens come in two categories civilized ones and primitive. Civilized are humanoid and are considered sentient, you can trade with them and make diplomacy. Primitive ones are the scum of the galaxy that shall be eradicated by all means possible, they eat other species upon conquest! Overall, everyone is hostile to the Empire, don’t count on allies, a temporary truce is the best you can wish for.

4. FLEETS AND SQUADRONS
Fleets are part of the strategic level of organization and you don’t see those on the map, all of them have Head Quarters on the imperial capital on Terra. You can have up to 9 fleets, each lead by an Admiral accompanied by a Vice Admiral. Each fleet has its own squadrons, modernizations, officers, etc. It’s best to not mix squadrons from different fleets in a military operation because of combat penalties.

Squadrons are the moving parts of your fleets. You see them on the map and can send to strengthen defence or conquer a system. Each squadron belongs to a certain fleet, its composition is determined by the fleet shipyard orders. Frequently squadrons have lower ship count than dictated by the fleet command due to combat loses.

To form a new squadron go to Fleet/Squadrons tab. A new squadron will appear on Terra and a suitable commanding officer will be selected from the fleet’s officer pool. The squadron will have no ships, you need to wait till new ones are constructed and send there (it’s done automatically). To speed this up you can use “Reorganize” option but it means some ships will be taken away from other squadrons.

To move a squadron click on it on the map (left mouse button), move the mouse over the destination system (you will see how many turn travel there will take) and click again (right mouse button). The squadron will change its icon to indicate the pending warp order. The next turn the squadron will enter warp and disappear from the galaxy then, after indicated number of turns passes, it will pop up on the destination system. To cancel the order just right click on the original planet. Note that you can’t change movement orders once the squadron enters warp.
Once a squadron is over an enemy planet it will engage all enemy squadrons there and all planetary defences. If victorious the Empire will control planet’s orbit and a ground invasion can start.

To change the composition of squadrons go to Fleet/Shipyard tab and select how many of what ship types should be in a squadron (all squadrons in a fleet are supposed to have identical composition and size, but it rarely happens because of combat loses). Those ships will be constructed over time. To speed this up you can increase the fleet’s priority, but it means squadrons of other fleets will get fewer new ships.

Ships are fully automated and are of no concern of yours. Those will move to their squadrons, return to the shipyard for repairs and so on. One thing worth keeping an eye on is the distance from the imperial capital (imperial communication range), the farther a squadron operates from imperial shipyards the longer ships will have to travel.

5. DEFENCE AND CONQUEST
Defensive installations on planet are auto built at a rate determined by your Defence Budget (Finances/Budget tab). Those installations will fire upon any enemy squadrons that enter the orbit of the planet.

Imperial infantry is garrisoned on planets and built similarly to defensive installations. They can’t be moved and will fight till the end to defend the imperial planet. You can grant a “defence subsidy” (Planet/Administration tab) to strengthen the defensive installations and troops on the planet, but note that all subsidies expire at the end of era.

Stormtroopers are elite mobile infantry used for conquering planets. Once your squadrons take over control of the planet orbit stormtroopers will be automatically dropped to the ground (it might take several turns to deploy them). Note that the empire has limited number of stormtroopers so conquering several planets at once might be not advisable.

Invasion starts after your squadrons take control of planet’s orbit. Your squadrons start bombarding the planet and stormtropers start to be dropped. There is an invasion progress meter, once it reaches 100% the Empire takes over the planet. If at any moment you lose control of the orbit (by moving squadrons away for example) all invasion progress will be lost and you will need to start from scratch. After the planet is conquered stormtroopers will be recalled (it can take several turns).
Since the enemy need to control planet orbit to start an invasion do not bother with any remaining enemy ground troops, those are in the process of retreating.

6. ECONOMY AND POPULATION
As the Emperor you don’t deal with trivialities and give only generic orders regarding economy. Typically, the Empire will grow economically on its own with minor adjustments required from the Emperor.

There are five industries:
* Agriculture (farms) those provide food which is consumed by the population. It affects population growth and happiness (mouse over the food icon on the top panel for details). Do not let the food coverage fall below 50% or you will face starvation.
* Mining (mines) those extract minerals which are used to make ships (mouse over the minerals icon on the top panel for details). Note that low manufacturing capacity can limit how many minerals can be processed into ships (but that’s rarely a bottleneck).
* Refining (refineries) those extract precious gas which is then converted to electricity. It’s vital to keep the electricity going (every 10% of electricity shortage a new negative effect is introduced, mouse over the electricity icon on the top panel for details).
* Manufacturing (factories) those provide free upkeep for imperial ships (mouse over the coin icon below the Fleet tab on the top panel for details) and determine how many minerals per turn can be processed into ships (mouse over the minerals icon below the Industry tab for details). It’s vital to invest in those in order to maintain a big ships count, otherwise the Empire might face bankruptcy.
* Services (offices) those provide extra money (check Finances tab for details).

Shipyard:
There is only one Imperial Shipyard located on Terra. All ships are produced there and then send to squadrons. You can order new ships via Fleet tab, you do so by ordering how many ships of what kind should be in all squadrons in a given fleet, you can also set fleet reinforcements priorities. Based on priorities and quotas you set new ships will be ordered and constructed. Production of new ships costs minerals and also require manufacturing capacity of factories. Repairing ships is free.

Each planet has planetary governor who builds whatever he/she see fit. Each planet can support a limited number of industrial facilities (usable planet size which ranges between 10 and 200). If the planet has no more space for industrial facilities the governor will replace the old ones. The rate of construction depends on the local planetary budget which can be affected by the imperial tax and Infrastructure budget (check Finances/Tax and Finances/Budget tabs).

To increase the number of certain industries you can:
* Change industrial priorities (check Industry tab) which affects Empire wide what planetary governors will tend to build (excluding nonsense cases, a governor of a desert planet will never build farms even if the agriculture priority is at maximum).
* Set planet’s specialization (check Planet/Administration tab) which affects what the planetary governor of this particular planet will build.
* Colonize/conquer planets of certain types (Terran type planets are best for growing food, Lava planets have frequently best minerals, gas can be found on Jungle planets, etc).

To increase efficiency of industries you can also:
* Research a technology (check Research tab) that increases output of an industry or all industries (note that you also get Industrialization bonus for the level of Construction science).
* Grant an ‘Economic subsidy’ to a planet (check Planet/Administration tab).
* Make sure there is a big population which provide a decent workforce which grants a bonus to industries output (check Planet/Economy tab).
* Assure a decent development level of imperial planets.

Population grows on its own as long as there is at least 50% food coverage (but more food is highly recommended since it speeds growth rate) and the planetary maximum population has not been reached. Population pays taxes (check Finances/Tax tab), provide workforce (bonus to industries output) and grants a bonus to research (check the research icon on the top panel for details).